What (most) Muslims want is something like what America was like in the early days. Puritan society was extremely democratic, insofar as the people did make the rules for society. But it was not liberal democracy—the puritans created public schools for the purpose of socializing children into religion. They also made it a criminal offense to celebrate Christmas: https://www.history.com/news/when-massachusetts-banned-chris...
> insofar as the people did make the rules for society
But which rules? While Islam does have certain leeway for certain things to be left to society to decide, not everything is. You will not find any Muslim who will make it an offense to celebrate Eid for example.
This is also why the West generally supported or stayed quiet about the violent coup that took out the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's only democratically elected government. We value liberalism even if it's at the point of a gun over democracy.
Shadi Hamid has been instrumental in helping me understand the distinction between the two things. Here’s a good example: https://mobile.twitter.com/shadihamid/status/144363599537580.... More generally: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2016/08/shadi-hamid-on-i...
What (most) Muslims want is something like what America was like in the early days. Puritan society was extremely democratic, insofar as the people did make the rules for society. But it was not liberal democracy—the puritans created public schools for the purpose of socializing children into religion. They also made it a criminal offense to celebrate Christmas: https://www.history.com/news/when-massachusetts-banned-chris...